After my last post about an oddly specific subset of Internet sexuality, I feel I need to bring things out a bit. Talk about something more universal. And what better universal thing to talk about than Rule 34, one of the well-known, but not entirely agreed upon Rules of the Internet (this version is but one of many). So what is Rule 34?
Rule 34: There is porn of it, no exceptions
Sometimes rephrased as “if it exists, there is porn of it, no exceptions”, Rule 34 is simple, straightforward and 100% true. The beauty of Rule 34 is that even though The Rules of the Internet were designed specifically for 4chan (thus the mention of /b/ and several 4chan in-jokes), Rule 34 more or less applies everywhere. It’s one of the few consistent things tying the vast, disparate world of the Internet together.
So now the question is, why is there porn of it. In an attempt to answer this question, I used the official Rule 34 website (which I will not link to because it is honestly disgusting), to access a numeric ranking of the Internet’s favorite things to corrupt, which I dug through for trends that I will now attempt to explain.
The first thing I noticed is that the most popular subjects of Rule 34 were all beloved childhood franchises, such as cartoons, video games and superheroes. The obvious explanation for this is a sadistic one. As mentioned in my 4chan post, the inhabitants of some corners of the Internet love using bizarre sexual images to shock and disgust people for entertainment value. And really, few things are more shocking and disgusting than seeing your favorite cartoon characters having poorly drawn sex with each other.
Unless, of course, you’re into that. But why would people enjoy, and in fact, actively seek out having entertainment for children turned into porn? While this is the sort of question that would require extensive research to answer accurately, one possible answer is the appeal of nostalgia. Research has shown that reminiscing on the past can put you in a good mood, so maybe Internet dwellers trolling for porn get a little extra fun out of the experience by reminiscing on childhood crushes on fictional characters. It’s a leap, I know, but it would at the very least make for an interesting hypothesis to test.
The other thing I noticed when looking at Rule 34 was that there was a lot of sex with animals. Or, more specifically, anthropomorphic animals. This is almost certainly the doing of the furry fandom, which I will discuss further in my next post.
Sexuality And Internet Culture 